Posted
by
Zonk
on Thursday June 15, 2006 @02:26PM
from the rmt-for-the-lose dept.

Eurogamer has the news that both Blizzard and Square/Enix have banned another batch of players for farming. The number of accounts, and the amount of money removed from the economy, is astonishing. From the article: "According to the World of Warcraft website, some 30,000 accounts were banned last month - and, as a result, more than 30 million gold were removed from the economy across all realms ... Based on the results of this investigation, more than 250 [FFXI] accounts among those found to be involved in large-scale RMT operations have been terminated... Thanks to these measures, more than 250 billion gil has been removed from circulation."

Sure, it's interesting that there are large, organized networks that employ legions of people willing to spend their days harvesting gold, but what really strikes me is the degree to which gold farmers manipulate a server's entire economy.

I had to do some research on just what "gold farming" even meant.
From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

A farmer is a general term for a person who acquires in-game currency in a MMORPG through collecting items and money that can be obtained by continually defeating enemies within the game. Farming is a popular method in which to obtain in-game currency within many MMORPGs. A gold farmer is a person who collects in-game currency for the purpose of selling it to other players for real world currency, such as the US dollar.

if you want to do strictly PvP, there are rewards for doing PvP as well.

With top end gear thats limited to 4-5 people per server, and is still vastly inferior to whats found in BWL. So you still won't be able to compete. Not that you could get to the top anyway, as you'd need the best gear to have a chance.

Through the standard progressive sequence, if you raid the proper dugneons sequentially, you will get acceptable gear simply from drops or quests. There is simply no need to buy the stuff.

If you don't want to have to do the same dungeon 50 times waiting for a 2% drop? If it gets ninja looted when it does drop? Or if you lose the roll legitamitely? If you want to play with friends who aren't still doing those lower level dungeons?

Gear certainly helps in certain areas, but you in no way need top end gear

Top end gear is absolutely necessary to do PvP. Its absolutely necessary to do high level dungeons (admittedly, you can do lower level ones without it). Get 40 people in greens in MC and have fun- you won't be able to beat more than 1-2 bosses, and that will be with heavy deaths.

No. The last time the US didn't have inflation was 1912, before the Federal Reserve was established. As soon as the US Government went on a paper diet, inflation began and has never stopped.

The 1930's did have inflation, because the government put in place legal restrictions against people dropping prices to fit the changing market conditions. As a result, there were surpluses which the government then paid (with printed money) farmers to destroy.

If you want to decry the depression of the 1930's, you might notice that it happened after the establishment of the Federal Reserve, which was touted as a way to prevent the mild recessions that had occurred during the 19th century.

And, d'you know, the US does exactly that? The US government gives the most food aid (in dollar amounts) of any country over the globe. Wanna know how they spend it? About 99% of that aid is spent buying food from US farmers and then shipping it to crisis points, using US-registered vessels, at great expense and an increase in global carbon emissions. Sure beats buying it locally, thus spending less money for the same amount of food, getting the aid there about five months sooner, helping third world farmers and reducing environmental impact all at the same time, huh? (Read p.3 of this. [salon.com] You'll need a free temporary pass.)

Farm subsidies are possibly the greatest barrier to third world agricultural development there is (that's as true for EU subsidies as anyone else's), but talk about a way to make things worse. So, no, you shouldn't be paying farmers to farm, then buying their excess food to send it, using your vessels, to the third world. You should be paying farmers to manage the countryside, and buying food aid as close to famine areas as possible. By all means use it US food to feed the hungry in the US, but please, for the sake of the famine-stricken, keep American food out of African mouths.

And guess what? As of today, the bot is still out there in the exact same location farming the same group of mobs. Bloody disappointing, let me tell you.

Don't be disappointed: Blizzard is actually being pretty smart about this. Once they catch a bot farming, they don't want to immediately shut it down. That's selecting for resistance.

Instead, they flag the account and monitor who it sends money/items to. Those items are flagged. It spreads like so.

Also, you can develop a profile of the bot, perhaps update Warden (the process that Blizzard uses to scan for bots in the background) to detect the software that's being run. Then, over the course of several weeks the software will spread to other users. Then you can start nailing hundreds of them at a time.

And you also hit them harder. You take more accounts out, you remove more stuff from people who are buying gold/items/etc.

So chances are you'll see that guy operating for a while. Feel good: he's helping Blizzard find the rest of his ilk. Oh, and thank you for reporting him!